Sydney WorldPride 2023 Says Yas to Art
A host of exhibitions and events are planned for the travelling LGBTQIA+ festival, which comes to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time 17 February to 5 March.
The Huxleys, Leigh (2022). Giclèe archival print, 106 x 106 cm. Courtesy Carriageworks, Sydney.
Sydney, a city famous for its Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, won the right to host the WorldPride festival in 2023. Art institutions across the city have embraced Sydney WorldPride in their programming.
Carriageworks is showing Paul Yore's exhibition WORD MADE FLESH through 26 February. They describe his assemblage as a cacophonous, kaleidoscopic 'gesamtkunstwerk' (or total artwork) that 'imagines a queer alternative reality, erected from the wasteland of the Anthropocene, performatively implicating itself into the debased spectacle of hyper-capitalist society.'
Also at Carriageworks is The Huxleys' exhibition Bloodlines (through 5 March), a tribute to queer artists who informed the art duo's sensibility, including Leigh Bowery, Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring, and Sylvester.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) is showcasing LGBQTIA+ artists with Queer encounters, which presents works by Bhenji Ra, Dennis Golding, Sione Tuívailala Monū, and Sidney McMahon in the Gallery's original South Building from 17 February.
The AGNSW also conducted a research and labelling project called Queering the Collection that views their existing works through a new lens. Over 50 works are reexamined to draw attention to the previously erased or minimised role LGBTQIA+ artists played in the evolution of art-making.
The Gallery will open its doors from 5pm to 10pm on 22 February for Queer Art After Hours, a night of live music and other kinds of performance.
UNESCO World Heritage site Hyde Park Barracks will present five nights of queer artist activations under the title Queer in Warrane from 22 to 26 February. Among the highlights is Dylan Mooney's light artwork Still here and thriving, which consists of portraits depicting love in queer communities.
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Other exhibitions bedazzling Sydney WorldPride include Karla Dickens: Embracing Shadows at Campbelltown Arts Centre through 12 March, Braving Time: Queer Art in Contemporary Australia at The NAS Galleries through 18 March, and the exhibition of First Nations LGBTQIA+ artists Baya, Ngara, Banga (Speak, Listen, Make) at Boomalli Gallery from 17 February to 5 March.
The inaugural WorldPride was held in Rome in 2000. It was held inNew York in 2019 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising and then travelled to Copenhagen in 2021, where it took place during the EuroGames. Taiwanese city Kaohsiung won the bid to host WorldPride 2025. —[O]
